The title of Maura Delpero’s second feature refers to a small Italian Alpine village. There is talk of war amongst the community, but at first it’s hard to place which war is being referred to. It’s actually 1944 and the war has taken most of the young men away, but this community seems entrenched in a distant past. The women are all kitted out in long skirts, there are few signs of electricity or motorised transport, the schoolchildren recite the Lord’s prayer in Latin, illiteracy among the adults reigns.
One of the village elders is Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) and the story revolves around him and his increasingly large family. The film opens with the simplicity of the family’s rigorous morning routine, with chores being performed, milk going from cow to cup and each member getting an equal share. A sense of complete togetherness is implied. Yet this family has more than its fair share of secrets and hiding: Cesare locks away his secret stash of porn, his middle daughter Ada (Rachele Potrich) struggles between her religious devotion and burgeoning sexuality, hiding in a corner to masturbate and punishing herself with horrible penances. The older daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) begins an illicit love affair with army deserter Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico). Pietro rescued Cesare’s nephew Attilio on their escape from the army and is now ensconced in Vermiglio, yet he too has mysteries of his own that are later revealed.
Cesare is both patriarch of his burgeoning family and head schoolteacher, school being a single room in which all the village kids are lumped together. He is respected and liked, though somewhat set apart from his fellow men. He sits alone at the village bar whilst other men sit together in easy companionship. They are happy to defer to him, and some of the men attend his adult education classes, yet there is little sense of real friendship, other than with the local doctor.
Cesare’s sense of superiority is made clear by his treatment of his wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli), a woman who for the most part silently endures the endless pregnancies, the grief of losing some of those children, the scrimping and saving so that Cesare can have his little luxuries – a gramophone player and records. They can only afford to send one daughter to school, and it is Cesare who makes the final decision. When Adele does respond to Cesare in anger and frustration, his reaction is violent and awful.
Women’s suffering is a keynote throughout the film: women work the fields, keep house and home, they are less likely to get an education and have to go through multiple pregnancies and births. At one point Adele and Lucia are pregnant together. Women can’t enter the church for forty days after giving birth to give them time to ‘cleanse their bodies’. It’s not just the outfits that make this film appear set in another century. A woman’s reputation is everything; if it is lost, going to work in town is the only option available to her. (In an interesting side note, Delpero was pregnant during the genesis of the film and was breastfeeding her daughter during shooting.)
Although the village name translates as ‘vermilion’, the film abounds with hues of blue. There is the bluish white of the deep snow, the deeper blue of the skies, and the blues of the woollen clothes. Cesare has blue eyes – one of them a startling sapphire, the other a milky azure. Each scene is beautiful, whether it contains the natural landscape or the simple interiors, with brilliant work by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman. Those interiors are exquisite, set decorator Sara Pergher capturing the balance of the bourgeois aspirations of Cesare and the simple, overcrowded rustic beauty of the Graziadei household. Everything in the home is as pristine as the Alpine snow beyond the windows.
Despite appearing to be a simple tale of an Italy that no longer exists (or which is at least on its way out), this is a powerful feminist film. It is quietly vocal in its condemnation of the patriarchal norms that once existed in the open and now still subtly prevail. Delpero – who also wrote the screenplay – makes no easy choices with her story, but they are all good ones. This is a quiet, gorgeous film that we should be shouting to the rafters about.
